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2010 Governor · MA

Suffolk University · fieldwork ended 2010-10-26 (7 days before the election) · 500 respondents · Live Phone

The poll said

Democrat 46% · Republican 39%

D+7.0

The certified result

Democrat 48.42% · Republican 42.01%

D+6.4

The arithmetic

  1. Poll margin = 46 − 39 = 7.00
  2. Actual margin = 48.422 − 42.005 = 6.417
  3. Signed miss = 7.00 − (6.417) = 0.582
  4. Absolute miss = |0.582| = 0.582

The poll overstated the Democrat by 0.6 points and had the right leader.

Where these numbers come from

Poll and result: 538 raw_polls.csv. Poll ID 53024, race ID 1294 (538 database).